Fruitcake Flambé
by Reenie Bleenie
Summary: Featuring two of the Bone Cousins, a holiday, alcohol, and an explosion!


A/N: Okay, so I am an author who LOVES Bone, right? Well, look at this archive. Apparently I am one of about eight other writers on the ENTIRE INTERNET who love it enough to READ Bone fanfiction, and one of FOUR who bothered to WRITE about it so far. Yeah, we all know it. This archive needs some love, fangirls and fanboys! Maybe with everyone's help we can bring this place to life. LET'S MAKE JEFF SMITH PROUD! That said, please enjoy my tiny, pathetically short little one shot. It was kind of meant as a warm-up of sorts. It takes place a little before Phoney runs for Mayor.

P.S. Apologies to my wonderful beta, Jamocha101, but I _really _wanted to get this out here, and so I edited it myself. :)

Disclaimer: If I owned Bone, the movie would be out by now.

-:-

Phoney Bone actually enjoyed cooking. You wouldn't expect a greedy obnoxious cheapskate to have that kind of a hobby, but he did. In fact, cooking was one of the extremely few things that Phoney didn't pay someone to do for him (often).

During the season around Winter Solstice in Boneville, cooking and baking were very popular pastimes. The town even held an annual bake-off, which was rather similar to the eating contest that took place at the spring fair. One of the most common things to bake for the solstice celebration was fruitcake. Fruitcake was a natural part of the solstice. _Why_ so many people insisted on making fruitcakes, however, was anyone's guess; only a select few, seven people at best, were actually that good at cooking in general. Everyone else always produced a mixture that was _close_ to batter, but closer to spackle, and that was _before _they even put it in the oven. Then, after the holiday, they were stuck with a dozen brick-like and completely useless lumps of cake that took up an entire shelf of their refrigerator until July when they _finally_ began to go bad and someone got the nerve to throw them out.

Phoney happened to be one of the seven or so who could actually bake well. Every year he whipped up a large batch of at least three dozen fruitcakes. A couple were for him and his cousins, and the rest were bought by people around town. Fone Bone had managed to restrain Phoney from exploiting this business any further, at least so far, but every year he had to work hard to reign his greedy cousin in. Because people never failed to buy Phoney's fruitcakes- The reason why was no secret. Phoney mixed in various alcohols, and so people actually _ate_ his cakes. Several other aspiring bakers around town had tried to re-create his recipe, but no one seemed to be able to get the same results (They did, however, manage to discover how to make a rather delicoius fruit cocktail drink). And so, things went on as usual every solstice. This one was no different.

Phoney was known to _"experiment" _with different types of alcohol. One day, he was annoyed to discover that he was suffering from a shortage of whiskey, the usual alcoholic ingredient of fruitcake, but after some rummaging around in the kitchen he produced a bottle of tequila.

"Hm... Yeah, this'll work," he muttered to himself, placing the bottle on the kitchen counter and getting out the measuring cups. He poured a measure of tequila into the batter, dumped the batter into the pan, and slid his masterpiece into the oven.

Alcohol burns (duh), very easily in fact. So when you bake a fruitcake or something else with alcohol in it, you _have_ to set the oven at a very low temperature. Set it no higher than 250 degrees (F); otherwise, the top of your fruitcake will catch fire- never a good thing. Plus, who wants to explain why the top of the cake is charred?

Enter Smiley Bone.

As Phoney slid the pan into the oven, his cousin sauntered into the room. "Hiya cuz!" He said brightly, grinning in that way that sometimes made Phoney think that maybe it was time to break out a straightjacket.

"Hey Smiley," he replied. Smiley surveyed the kitchen.

"Whatcha makin'? Fruitcake, right? Can I have some? Has it got whiskey? Or something a little more daring? Is it strong? Can I have some now?" Smiley rattled off so many questions at once it made Phoney's head spin. He was surprised Smiley's brain even worked that fast. With so many inquries at once, Phoney decided to just answer the last one.

"No." He said shortly, stirring another batch of batter. Smiley leaned way down to hover right over his cousin's shoulder- he knew Phoney hated that-and looked sideways at him, grinning goofily.

"How 'bout now?"

"Not unless you wanna simultaneously get both salmonella poisoning and completely stone-cold wasted from eating raw cake batter containing hard liquor." Phoney said waspishly. He wasn't really in the mood to deal with Smiley's poking at him, something Smiley himself could tell, because he backed up a little and gave his cousin some space. That didn't mean he was going to stop teasing- he was having way too much fun. He was walking a tightrope right now; the plan was to irritate Phoney enough to entertain himself, but not to get kicked out before he got some fruitcake. That stuff was _good._

"Is it ready _now_?" He asked after waiting the exact amount of time to get the right reaction from his irate cousin. Poking at Phoney was an art form- done in innocent fun, of course, but still dangerous at times. You had to know exactly what to say, and Smiley had years of practice.

_"Check for yourself, why don't you?" _Smiley did. He opened the oven door and grinned at the slowly baking beauty before him. It was then that he noticed the temperature. 250 degrees? Must have been an accident, although Smiley had never known Phoney to mess up in the kitchen very often. He glanced back at Phoney and laughed.

"You'll never get it done like _that._" He reached out and cranked the heat up to 350 degrees.

Remembering several previous fruitcake fireballs, Phoney sighed and reached toward the oven. "Smiley, you _have _to cook it that low, alcohol..."He started to say, reaching towards the knob. But he only got as far as, "Smiley..." When his hand touched the dial.

**WHOMP.** The oven door blew open with the force of a small bomb, cracking Phoney hard on the wrist touching the heat knob. At the same time, a huge sheet of blue flame shot out and engulfed Phoney's head completely.

The two cousins stood there in silence. Phoney was frozen in the same position, dazed, his face coated with soot. Smiley broadcasted a look of complete shock. The smell of burnt fruitcake permeated the air. Phoney managed to finish his sentence: "... Alcohol burns."

"Hey Phoney... You okay?" Smiley asked, beginning to laugh in spite of himself. His cousin grimaced and wiped some of the soot off of his face.

"Yeah. Think I cracked my wrist pretty bad, though." He muttered, rubbing it and wincing. "Ow." Smiley patted him on the back sympathetically.

"Is it hospital-worthy?" He asked, inspecting the already-forming bruise for himself.

"Nah." Phoney shook his head dismissively. "Might want to wrap it up, though," he added as an afterthought. Smiley nodded.

"There's a bandage in the hall bathroom, right? I'll get it for you." Offered Smiley. Phoney nodded slowly, scrubbing at a spot of soot with his shirtsleeve that was rather stubborn about coming off. Then he looked around the kitchen, taking in the oven billowing smoke, the huge mess on the counters, the bowl of batter on the floor that had somehow gotten knocked over and now covered a good portion of the kitchen, making it look like Jackson Pollock had a seizure in there on top of everything else.

"Okay. You do that. I'll... _Try _to start cleaning up in here," sighed Phoney. Smiley gave him a happy thumbs-up and headed off to grab that bandage. He heard Phoney muttering to himself as he strolled cheerfully down the hallway. "This is gonna be a_ fun_ one to explain to Fone Bone, ho boy. How th' _heck_ am I supposed to tell him my fruitcake exploded?"

~FIN~

A/N: Wahoo! Hope you guys enjoyed it! It was kinda short and everything, but more and more little one-shots like this will eventually build up this tweeny archive! By the way, I'm not really sure _where_ they are. Maybe in Phoney's apartment? You take a guess. This little thing was inspired by a very funny story a friend of mine told me, and that little part in _The Great Cow Race _where Thorn comments on how The Barrelhaven's menu has improved dramatically since Lucius put Smiley and Phoney to work, and Fone Bone tells her that Phoney always was a good cook. I just thought that was kinda cool. Supposed multi-millionaire, big bucks and all that, and he's also a good cook. Those little traits are the most interesting. Anyway, doesn't that little blue button look enticing? PLEASE REVIEW! Let me know there are still some fans out there!

Ciao!

~Reenie


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